Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!xanth!lll-winken!uunet!snjsn1!bilbo!greg From: greg@bilbo (Greg Wageman) Newsgroups: comp.graphics Subject: Re: What is more important???? Message-ID: <755@snjsn1.SJ.ATE.SLB.COM> Date: 20 Mar 89 17:27:53 GMT References: <1663@aucs.UUCP> Sender: news@SJ.ATE.SLB.COM Reply-To: greg@sj.ate.slb.com (Greg Wageman) Distribution: na Organization: Schlumberger ATE, San Jose, CA Lines: 34 In article <1663@aucs.UUCP> 870646c@aucs.UUCP (The Buck Stops Here!) writes: >In trying to determine the best route in which to upgrade my Amiga 2000 to >reduce the time needed to do ray tracing, I need to know if it would be >more important to obtain an upgrade board with the following: > >My big question is this: "Under normal ray tracing, would the prg. make more >use of the 68881 or the 68020(which is more important)? Of course the program >itself only uses the 68020, but how much math is really being done??? Ray-tracing is one of the most floating-point-math-intensive applications I know of on personal computers. Using the fastest math coprocessor available for your machine will be a big performance win. Of course, running your main processor at a higher speed will help too, since it is still responsible for executing the overall program. But in this application the math coprocessor is heavily used, performing literally hundreds of millions of floating-point operations for a typical scene, say 640 by 400 pixels, with reflections and/or refractions. Longish .signature follows. Skip now, or don't complain! Greg Wageman ARPA: greg@sj.ate.slb.com Schlumberger Technologies BIX: gwage 1601 Technology Drive CIS: 74016,352 San Jose, CA 95110-1397 UUCP: ...!uunet!sjsca4!greg (408) 437-5198 ------------------ There's nothing I hate more than a Usenet posting which took three seconds to compose and three minutes to type, glibly dismissing three years (or three decades) of an author's work in three lines. ------------------ Opinions expressed herein are solely the responsibility of the author. (And the author wouldn't have it any other way.)